


heart on your sleeve

by Anonymous



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 'Swawesome Santa, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Soulmarks, Soulmates, an important ingredient to all zimbits fics, how do soulmates work exactly?, lots of Jack Zimmermann hearteyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9014710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Bitty had always wanted to get a soulmark, but never had the opportunity to while living in Georgia. Once at Samwell, he struggles to find the courage to take the leap and get the soulmark, but he's so glad when he does.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckie_dee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckie_dee/gifts).



> Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays! This was written as a Swawesome Santa gift to luckie_dee who asked for some fluffy zimbits, with a trope or two thrown in. I've been meaning to do a good Soulmates AU forever, so I hope you like it!! <3
> 
> Thanks to @lydia-st-james for mucho story support and beta services. Any wonky tense shifts are mine and I’m eternally sorry.

Bitty had never met someone with a soulmark before he came to Samwell. Or maybe he had, but just didn’t know it. Once, in a furtive Google session, he’d discovered that there was a single registered soulmark artist in Georgia, based out of Atlanta, but in his junior year of high school, long before he was able to put his plan of sneaking off to go see her in motion, soulmark application was outlawed by the state legislature and that put an end to it.

He saw his first soulmark in the locker room at Faber, a few days into his first semester at Samwell, which seemed like a good omen if Bitty were the type to believe in omens. (He was, although he would never tell his Mama.) It was on the back of Justin - _Bro, call me Ransom_ \- Oluransi’s neck and was a strange mess of lines and ink that meant it hadn’t settled yet. Bitty wondered if it was new. He snuck glances at it when he was sure it was safe and no one seemed to catch him, but he didn’t make a habit of it. He knew the danger of looking too long in the locker room.

Bitty never brought it up himself, but whenever the topic was mentioned, he would always scoot his chair a little closer as the upperclassmen talked about the soulmarks. Ransom wasn’t the only one with a soulmark, as it turned out. The senior goalie Johnson had one as well and what’s more, it was settled. It was a polar bear, splashed with blue and purple and bright on his thigh. Bitty nearly fainted with excitement the first time he met Johnson’s girlfriend after a game and the same bear poked out from her shoulder under a tank top.

That same night at team dinner, Shitty caught him sneaking a look at Johnson’s girlfriend’s back while everyone was turned toward the ESPN highlights on the TV at Jerry’s.

“Bits.” Shitty grinned. “You thinking about inking up?”

Bitty flushed and stammered.

“My mom would kill me,” he finally managed after casting about for a better explanation. He just barely remembered to say ‘mom’ instead of ‘mama’. It’s one of the things he had practiced before coming to Samwell to minimize the most hick parts of his accent.

Shitty slapped him on the back and squeezed his shoulder.

“Man, fuck parents,” he said.

Bitty nodded his head because he wasn’t sure what else to do and then immediately felt guilty. He made a mental note to call his Mama after breakfast the next morning to make up for it.

“Oh, I mean - “ Bitty started. “Mine aren’t so bad.”

Shitty opened his mouth and sucked in a breath as though winding up for a long speech, but was interrupted.

“Shitty,” Jack said, glancing up from his stack of sausage and eggs.

“Jacky boy, don’t tell me you’ve never thought about getting a soulmark,” Shitty said, waggling his eyebrows at Jack.

Jack gave him the most unimpressed look Bitty had ever seen and then returned to his eggs without a word. Shitty sighed longsufferingly.

“I would swear there wasn’t a romantic bone in your body, Zimmermann,” he said. “But then I remember that sweet as fuck assist you gave me last week.”

Jack cracked a small smile.

“Do you think if you got a soulmark it would just settle as soon as you picked up a hockey stick?” Shitty asked, rubbing his mustache thoughtfully as he squinted at Jack, as though seriously trying to suss him out.

“Probably,” Jack agreed.

  


\--

  


Although Bitty never knew her before, Lardo’s sudden appearance in the Haus and at practice after Winter Break seemed right in a way that was hard to explain. The first time he saw her soulmark, a splash of red and purple bleeding down her arm, he thought it was paint that she hasn’t washed off from her studio class. It took seeing it a second time to realize that it was actually an unsettled soulmark, swirling down her slim, brown arm. It took a third time to ask her if he could touch it.

“Yeah, man,” she said with a grin, holding her arm out for inspection across the kitchen counter at the Haus. “Totally.”

Bitty reached out, touching two fingers to her cool skin to trace the indistinct edges of the mark. The ink moved a bit under his finger, responding to his touch before quickly returning to normal. Bitty leaned closer, watching for more movement, but the mark was quiet.

“Cool, huh?” Lardo asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling his hand back after lingering too long on her skin. “Thanks.”

“No prob,” she said. She snagged one of the cooling cookies from the rack beside Bitty and popped it in her mouth. She licked her fingers free of sugar before saying, “It’s kind of like...being a living piece of art sometimes. I think that’s why I got it.”

“So you didn’t have anyone in mind?” Bitty asked, grabbing a cookie for himself.

Lardo paused, not answering right away, and then shook her head so a curtain of black hair fell over the right side of her face. She pushed it back.

“No, not really,” she said and Bitty didn’t point out that _not really_ wasn’t the same thing as _no_ since it seemed rude as they both stared at her unsettled mark.

Lardo pulled him aside after practice a few days later and he obediently met her in the bleachers after his shower. She was twirling a brush in her fingers when he sat down in front her, mirroring her straddle. She grinned.

“Give me your arm,” she said. When he hesitated, she grabbed it for herself and flipped it over to expose the pale skin under his wrist. “Just paint, I promise.”

“Okay,” he said.

She swirled a dark blue blob of paint with white on her palette and began painting. It tickled the soft skin of his arm but he didn’t draw away. He just watched as each stroke of her brush made his arm brighter and full of color. He wasn’t sure if she was painting anything in particular at first, but when she added purple and pink shadows to the circle of cool blue, he realized that she had made a blue planet on his arm, surrounded by purple rings and a white sky fading into pink. He smiled down at it as she wiped away a stray stroke with her thumb and inspected her work.

“It’s beautiful,” Bitty said, unprompted. He wanted to touch it, but he knew it would ruin it, both by smearing the still wet paint and reminding him that it was just paint and not a real soulmark. His chest twinged a little at the thought and he frowned. “Thank you.”

Lardo shrugged, but smiled at him all the same, clearly pleased that he liked her work.

He didn’t wash it off for two days and only then because it started to itch too badly to keep. His skin was raw and dry where he scraped and washed it away, but he missed it fiercely. He almost asked Lardo to paint him a new one at practice the next morning, but didn’t.

  
  


\--

 

Bitty’s season ended suddenly with a too-hard hit that sent him head-first into the ice. Half the team was crammed into the waiting room of the hospital later that night when he was finally discharged and he was escorted back to the Haus, head in Lardo’s lap in the backseat of Shitty’s car.

“Can you drive me to my dorm quad, Shitty?” he asked from the backseat as they pulled up to the Haus. Shitty and Jack both turned back to look at him from the front seat. Jack frowned.

“Bittle, you’re staying here tonight, not at your dorm,” Jack said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper. Bitty tried to nod but the flare of sparks behind his eyes was too painful to complete the motion. He groaned instead. Lardo’s hands stroked through his hair, still sweaty and unwashed from the game.

“Not on the couch,” Bitty whimpered as Lardo helped him sit up. Jack smiled back at him, but it came out more as a wince than a smile.

“No couch,” Jack said. “Promise.”

A moment later, Jack and Shitty were both out of the car when Jack reappeared just as suddenly at Bitty’s side, leaning into the backseat to help him out. Bitty found his feet on the pavement and Jack held him by the shoulders as though he might collapse at any minute.

“Do you think we should carry him upstairs?” Shitty asked softly, somewhere to the left of Bitty. Bitty wanted to turn to see him, but his head immediately complained at even the thought of turning. He swayed in place and Jack gripped his shoulders a little more firmly.

“Can walk,” Bitty said, but the words were slurred despite his best efforts.

Jack steered him towards the Haus and up the front stairs and Bitty tried not to stumble. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.

“Bittle,” Jack said from behind him as soon as they had made it inside. “Put your arms around my neck, okay?”

Bitty did his best to comply and Jack slowly bent his knees to pick him up into a cradle. Bitty hugged his neck, letting his head fall on Jack’s chest as Jack started to climb the stairs carefully. Every stair was agony despite Jack’s best efforts to go slowly without bumping Bitty too much. He groaned and Jack murmured something that Bitty didn’t understand. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly until Jack laid him down on a mattress, and then finally cracked an eye only to be met with a welcome darkness as Jack pulled a curtain tightly closed.

“Get some sleep, Bittle,” Jack said. “We’ll keep an eye on you and wake you up every couple of hours tonight to check on you, ok?”

Bitty wanted to nod again, but didn’t. His head was heavy against the pillow already as Jack tucked a warm blanket around him, and he was already drifting off by the time he heard the soft click of the door as Jack left.

Jack woke him up sometime in the early morning with a gentle “Hey Bittle” and a cool washcloth pressed to his forehead. Bitty swam awake in the dark, unfamiliar room which he only just now recognized as Jack’s. Jack sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at him seriously.

“M’awake,” Bitty said, his voice scratchy and rough, and reached up to touch the washcloth, pushing it out of his eyes where it had slipped. “Thanks.”

“Good,” he said. “You’re doing good, Bittle.”

“Head hurts,” Bitty managed after a moment.

Jack laughed a single “Ha!” before his expression softened.

“It’s going to hurt for a while, eh?” he said. “It was a bad hit.”

Bitty frowned. There was something he wanted to say, but his brain felt sluggish and wrong and his thoughts wouldn’t organize themselves into words. Jack handed him a glass of water and Bitty sat up, slowly. His head whirled with the effort and he blinked several times, waiting for the sensation to pass before taking a sip.

“Besides that, how are you feeling?” Jack asked as Bitty took another sip.

Bitty blinked owlishly at him in the dark, but couldn’t think of what to say. His head hurt too much to think about much else.

“Okay,” Jack said after a moment. “Go back to sleep, then, Bittle.”

Bitty handed over the glass and the washcloth and allowed himself to be settled back into the nest of blankets, with Jack pulling up the quilt to his chin. Bitty sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again with a sudden thought.

“Jack?” he said, barely louder than a croak

“Yeah, Bittle?” Jack answered, closer than Bitty thought he was.

“If you got a mark, I don’t think it would settle when you picked up a hockey stick.”

“What?” Jack asked after a beat of silence.

“I just wanted you to know,” Bitty murmured. “It wouldn’t be a hockey stick, you know?”

“Sure, Bittle,” Jack said. A cool hand was on his forehead now and Bitty sighed at the familiar feeling, sinking back into his pillow. “Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

 

\--

 

It took almost all summer for Bitty to feel better, as it turned out. He spent most of the summer in bed, or at least that’s how it felt. Mama hovered, but Coach was worse - his eyes tracking Bitty’s every move, constantly assessing his progress. Summer’s end was a blessing and Bitty was even  more grateful that Mama insisted on driving up to Samwell with him. The flight home had been excruciating, even with a double dose of ibuprofen, and although Bitty knew his condition had improved, he didn’t feel like flying again anytime soon.

He moved into the Haus and he started skating again and life went on. He didn’t make first line once the season started, but he hardly expected to after a summer of rusting at home while his teammates were able to train and improve. Instead, he was dropped down to third line with Shitty, but at least he was playing at all.

Jack didn’t have to bang on his door at 4 a.m. most Sunday mornings anymore because Bitty got himself up and ready without prompting and with minimal grumbling. He knew Jack had better things to do. (He knew he should be over his fear by now.)

Bitty started splitting off from Jack after they wrapped up at Faber in the morning to grab coffee at Annie’s instead of going straight back to the Haus and within a few weeks, he succeeded in cajoling Jack to join him.

“So, explain again to me why pumpkin in your coffee is good?” Jack asked after Bitty returned to the table with his warm latte. Bitty pulled a face at him.

“I know you’re teasing,” he said, refusing to answer the question _again_.

Jack’s mouth quirked and he took a sip of his plain, black coffee in what Bitty considered a punctuation of sorts to his chirp. Bitty was beginning to get very good at reading Jack’s unspoken commentary.

“Have you had Professor Atley before?” Bitty asked, changing the subject. “She seems nice.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Shitty and I did a seminar with her last year. She’s cool.”

“She has the loveliest soulmark I think I’ve ever seen,” Bitty sighed, thinking of the professor’s red and white cat that curled around the top of her dark brown bicep.

Jack’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t think I’ve seen it,” Jack said.

Bitty’s eyes widened.

“Really?” he asked. “It’s the most expressive cat and it’s got this great red detail that just looks beautiful with her skin. It’s on her upper arm which is maybe why you didn’t see it. She had her blazer off when I dropped by her office last week because Lord, it’s always burning up in the history building. How do you go to class there all the time?”

Jack made a noise of amusement in the back of his throat and Bitty took it as a sign to continue rambling. He talked and Jack listened, occasionally interjecting, for another twenty minutes before they threw their cups away and headed back to the Haus.

“Do you ever think about getting one?” Jack asked as they were walking back.

“What?” Bitty asked absentmindedly, mind already running through a list of ingredients he would need for a pie he wanted to make later that afternoon.

“A soulmark,” Jack clarified. “Do you want one?”

Bitty missed a step before recovering and looking over at Jack. He felt a flush on the back of his neck and hoped it hadn’t spread to his face as well.

“I mean,” Bitty said. “Of course.”

Jack nodded, but his mouth was still pulled down into a thoughtful frown. Bitty wasn’t sure if it was disapproving or not.

“I used to dream about getting one back in high school,” Bitty confessed, biting his lip. He couldn’t look at Jack, but he kept talking, knowing that Jack was listening. “I mean, I think I’ve seen every movie ever made about soulmarks and I’ve read so many articles, you would not believe. But you know, application has been illegal down in Georgia for a few years so I never really had much opportunity.”

“It’s not illegal here,” Jack pointed out. Bitty looked at him through his lashes and then looked away just as quickly. His lips were raw from biting and they were almost back at the Haus.

“I know,” Bitty said. “I guess I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. It was more that he wasn’t sure that he could really go through with getting one, but that was besides the point.

“Hm,” Jack allowed, but didn’t say anything further.

Bitty wanted to ask him a million questions, primarily _What about you?_ But he bit his tongue instead and forcefully returned to his shopping mantra in his head.

Jack didn’t bring it up again.

  
  


\--

  


There was a boy named Sam in his African Literature class whose mark was settling. It started small, looking a little less like someone spilled ink on his arm and a little more like a distinct shape and at first Bitty thought he might be imagining it. He only got a good look when Sam wore a tank top or short sleeves and the weather turned cold before anything big happened to it. But one day when the class attended a required lecture in Corbin Hall, the heat was turned up so high that everyone was sweltering and shedding layers as quickly as they could, so Bitty caught another look when Sam sat next to him.

“Oh!” he said, unable to hide his surprise.

Sam looked over and seeing Bitty’s gaze, self-consciously reached up and cupped the mark on his arm. Bitty blushed deep red and looked away.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” he whispered furiously. He felt a prick of embarrassment.

“No, it’s fine,” Sam said in his deep, rumbling voice. “It’s just new is all. I keep forgetting.”

“Oh,” Bitty said again.

An awkward silence fell between them while Bitty tried very pointedly not to look at the mark.

“Do you have one?” Sam asked after a moment, his voice pitched low so no one around them could hear. Bitty looked over to him in surprise and blushed again.

“No,” he said. “I… I’ve always wanted one, but you know…”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, even though Bitty could barely stammer out his answer. “They’re weird as fuck, man. I only got mine after I’d been dating Laura for months and she had one and it was starting to settle and it seemed like the thing to do.”

“Do you regret getting it?”

“No,” Sam said immediately. “It’s been good. It was wild to watch her mark change and then the next day mine would change too, but now that it’s settled, it just feels right. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

He said the last part so sincerely that Bitty couldn’t help but smile back at him.

Later, back at the Haus, he locked himself in his room and sat in front of his closet mirror for two hours staring at his forearm and remembering the bright paint from his fake soulmark that Lardo had given him the year before. He traced the soft blue of his veins under his skin as he thought about what it would be like to be that sure about someone.

 

\--

 

His breaks were always curtailed by games and practice obligations, but Bitty was glad for a reason to skip going home for longer than a few days around Christmas that year. It was getting harder and harder to hide after living at Samwell for so long and it was exhausting to be home for even a few days despite how excited he was to see his parents.

By the time the shuttle dropped him back at campus, Bitty felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. He made the long walk with his duffel back to Haus alone in the cold, snow swirling gently in the air. The weak glow of the sun above as the snowflakes melted wet and cold on his coat felt like omen, but he wasn’t sure what for.

He hardly had time to throw his bag into his room before he heard music swelling from Lardo’s room. He poked his head back out into the hallway and frowned. Lardo wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, he was sure of it.

He knocked on her door, but when there was no answer, he pushed his way in anyways. Lardo looked up at him from where she was sitting on the floor with a sketchpad in her lap.

“Hey, Bits,” she said. “Good to see you, man.”

“I want to get my mark,” Bitty blurted out instead of something more reasonable like _hello, what are you doing back so early_. He slapped a hand over his own mouth in surprise. He felt like he hadn’t stopped thinking about getting a soulmark since his conversation with Sam last semester, but he hadn’t planned on actually getting one until right that moment.

Lardo blinked at him a moment before setting her sketchbook aside and gesturing for him to sit on one of her beanbag chairs. He sank into it gratefully.

“Sorry,” Bitty said. “I meant to say hi first.”

“Something happen over break?” Lardo said, skipping over the rest.

“Not really,” Bitty sighed. “Maybe before break.”

She squinted at him and then, seemingly satisfied with what she saw, she shrugged.

“I can take you if you want,” she said.

“What? Now?” Bitty asked.

She shrugged again.

“Sure, why not?”

Bitty couldn’t think of why not, which is how they found themselves in the waiting room of a tattoo parlor two hours later waiting for the only soulmark artist in the parlor to finish up with another customer. Bitty was systematically ripping apart a flyer in his hands while Lardo played a game on her phone when they were finally called back.

“Hey guys, I’m Rose,” said a heavily pierced, tall woman. She had so much ink on her body that Bitty couldn’t immediately spot her soulmark, although he knew she must have one.

“Hi, Eric Bittle, I’m here to get a soulmark,” he said, extending a hand. Rose shook it firmly.

“Larissa Duan, I’m just here for the company,” Lardo said.

“Awesome,” Rose said, shaking her hand too. “Come on back and we’ll go over a couple of things before we get started.”

When Bitty stood, a few ribbons of torn paper fluttered to his feet and he scrambled to pick them up before he followed Rose into a private room. The room was an immediate change from the rest of the tattoo parlor. There was very little art on the wall by contrast and several charms and incense sticks burning.

Soulmark artists were a dying breed, especially in the Deep South where the magic involved was directly at odds with the deeply religious general population. Bitty remembered countless sermons growing up about the evil of “circumventing God’s plan for you” by getting a soulmark and how the marks were really distractions sent by the Devil to make you stray from the path. The sermons had never stopped Bitty from vociferously consuming romantic movies and fiction that featured soulmarks and dreaming of getting one of his own one day, just like the railing against homosexuality had never curbed his crush on his father’s star quarterback, Matt Burnham.

When it came time to choose a college, he told himself he was choosing Samwell because of the hockey scholarship and because of the 1 in 4 statistic, but if he secretly added the fact that there were at least five registered soulmark artists in Boston alone, he didn’t tell anyone. Now that he was here, in the studio of one of those artists, his head was spinning with the knowledge that his mother would have a stroke when he came home with a soulmark. He pushed that thought from his mind. The soulmark was for him and it wasn’t about her. She would learn to live with it.

“You’ll have to sign a waiver before I can do anything,” Rose said, interrupting Bitty’s thoughts by handing him a clipboard. “Most of it’s pretty obvious, but basically you’re consenting to me altering your skin with a magic charm that is irreversible and I can’t guarantee any outcomes or that it will settle in any set frame of time. Read it and don’t just sign, please.”

Bitty bent his head to read the waiver, but the words swam in front of his eyes. He waited several seconds before signing and hoped it was enough to convince her that he had fully read it. When he handed the waiver back to her, she didn’t blink when she threw it on a cluttered desk.

“Does it really not settle for some people?” Bitty asked as she started to prep her station. Rose looked back at him from where she stood next to a cabinet.

“It’s very rare,” she said. And then after grabbing a few small vials out of the cabinet, she sat down at her workstation and pulled out a stone bowl in which she poured one of the vials. “And honestly, I think it’s mostly people who don’t believe in the magic to begin with. You have to believe in the magic in order for it to really take root and allow a bond to form. Most people who get marks believe them, so no problem. You just have to follow the nudges.”

“Nudges?” Bitty asked. He couldn’t remember ever hearing that term before in any article he’d read about soulmarks. Rose shrugged as she added another vial to the mixture she was making in her bowl, stirring it with a finger before adding more from the first vial.

“It’s different for everyone, but a lot of time when you meet someone who is a potential match you’ll see the mark respond to them in a way that will be different than how it responds when say, some rando off the street that touches it.”

Bitty exchanged a glance with Lardo, thinking about the first time she’d let him touch her mark and how it had moved slowly before going back to sleep, uninterested in Bitty’s touch.

“The swirls,” Lardo confirmed and Rose made a small noise of amusement.

“Yeah, that’s common,” Rose said. “Some people feel a tingle too. It varies, but once you’ve had it for a while, you’ll recognize the small things. Just trust them.”

“And then?” Bitty asked.  His mouth was dry with anxiety as Rose finished mixing and pushed the bowl aside to test her needle by whirring the motor. Satisfied, she turned back to Bitty.

“And then, it takes a few months and it will only settle if they get their mark too. The bond can’t form without a proper mirror,” Rose said. “If they don’t get a mark, you might notice a lot of color changes and shapes and that’s just your mark trying to make sense of your emotions and stuff. Think of it a mood ring with no outlet, but once you unite it with another mood ring on the same frequency, you’ve got soulmark lock.”

“Can’t there be like hundreds of people with the same, um, frequency? How do you know you have the right one?”

Rose pursed her lips and the needle whirred in her hands again.

“I don’t know the absolute right answer, but I think it’s true that there are plenty of potential soulmates out there for any given person,” she said. “What matters is that you choose one and if you both have marks and you stick with each other long enough to form a bond and lock the soulmarks...well, I’ve never heard of anyone walking away from a bond and I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years now.”

“Okay,” Bitty breathed.

“Bitty, it’s gonna be sw’awesome,” Lardo said suddenly from the corner of the room where she had perched on a spare stool. “Trust me, it’ll work out.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding.

“Do you know where you want it?” Rose asked.

 

\--

 

“I’m proud of you for following through, brother,” Shitty said.

“Thanks, Shitty,” Bitty said quietly, drawing his knees up to his chest. They were sitting outside in the Reading Room and Shitty was finishing up a small spliff.  Bitty alternated between looking up at the few stars in the sky and the dark ink on the inside of his wrist. When Lardo and him had gotten back earlier that day, they had found the Haus full of boys, all who immediately honed in on the bandage on the inside of Bitty’s arm. He had spent at least an hour letting everyone in the Haus touch it and then had retreated upstairs to his room and eventually out to the roof when he heard Shitty settle into the lawn chair outside.

Bitty had a made a small cocoon of blankets and was slowly drifting off to sleep when the window next him slid open with a loud creak.

“Shits, you out here?” Jack said and then a moment later he poked his head out. Bitty looked over to Shitty and shrugged back at Jack.

“I think he’s asleep,” he said and as if to punctuate Bitty’s observation, Shitty snuffled loudly and re-settled in the chair. He began snoring quietly a moment later. Jack huffed a laugh and then climbed out of the window anyways.

“Did you just get back?” Bitty asked.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Just now.”

Jack settled down next to Bitty, eschewing the other lawn chair in favor of sitting on the roof.

“How was the rest of your break?”

“After your cookies ran out?” Jack asked, bumping his shoulders against Bitty’s.

“Jack Zimmermann, please tell me you shared those with your parents,” Bitty said.

“Of course,” he said. “A couple.”

Bitty shook his head and then reached up to brush some hair from his own eyes where it had fallen. He saw Jack freeze out of the corner of his eye and he realized that his soulmark was in full view for the first time since Jack had joined him.

“Rans told me, but I wasn’t sure I believed him.”

“Are you going to lecture me?” Bitty asked.

“What?”

“You have your lecturing face on,” he said.

Jack’s frown deepend.

“I have a lecturing face?”

“It’s a close cousin of your Captain face,” Bitty said, smirking at him.

Jack relaxed next to him.

“Oh, sorry,” he said.

“I - nevermind,” Bitty said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. You’re just trying to enjoy the night air and I’m over here ruining the moment. Sorry.”

Bitty stood up, carefully folding the blanket away to go back inside through Shitty’s window.

“No, I -” Jack said, cutting himself off with a shake of his head. “I did want to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Bitty said. He stood awkwardly with his blanket tucked under one arm until Jack patted the roof next to him. Bitty tentatively took his seat back but didn’t unfold the blanket despite the chill in the air.

“Why did you think I was going to lecture you?” Jack asked.

“It’s just…” Bitty flushed. “I know you don’t really like the marks and that you think they’re kind of silly to get.”

“Bittle,” Jack interrupted. “I never said that, did I? That I think they’re silly?”

“I...no,” Bitty stammered. “I guess not.”

“Good,” Jack said, sounding relieved. “I don’t. I just...you know, they’ve never really been an option for me, so I didn’t think about it much.”

Bitty frowned.

“Why wouldn’t it be an option?” he asked.

Jack was quiet for a long moment, staring off into the distance. When he turned back to Bitty and caught his gaze, his eyes were dark and hooded in the soft twilight around them.

“The NHL isn’t wild about players having them,” he said flatly, in what Bitty recognized as his press monotone. “Hurts the brand.”

Bitty snorted, but then immediately felt badly for doing so.

“Fuck them,” he said vehemently.

Jack, obviously surprised by his strong language, let out a loud burst of laughter before settling into a loose smile.

“Yeah,” he said, but nothing more.

Bitty summoned all of his bravery and asked, “Do you want to touch it? Everyone else has.”

Jack smirked at him.

“Well, if everyone else has,” he said with an audible eye roll.

Bitty sniffed dismissively at him and drew his arm closer to his chest.

“Nevermind,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind. Invitation revoked.”

Jack laughed again and then surprising Bitty, he dove at him, tackling him to the roof and pulling his arm away.

“Jack! No fair!” Bitty cried, hoping to wake the sleeping figure of Shitty for assistance. Jack shot Shitty a look and then smirked down at Bitty when the other senior didn’t stir. Jack took Bitty’s arm and inspected the indistinct mess of ink there before running a finger along the still sensitive skin. Even in the dark, Bitty could see the way the mark responded to Jack’s touch, changing to a lighter color in the wake of his finger and Bitty felt as though his heart forgot how to beat for several seconds as he watched the fresh ink swirl into blooms of brighter color on his arm.

“Huh, is that what it always does?” Jack said and even as he took away his hand, the mark continued to agitate, the colors mixing and swirling as though they were in a snowglobe that had just been upended. Bitty felt like he couldn’t breathe as he watched it, transfixed.

“Yes,” Bitty lied as soon as he found his voice. “Cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Cool.”

 _Swirls_ , Bitty thought, staring down at his arm. It really was easy to tell when it was different.

 

\--

 

His Spring semester was excruciating and wonderful all at the same time. His soulmark was quiet most of the time, but sometimes after a long study session at Annie’s or early morning checking practice with Jack, Bitty would find the mark swirling and changing colors for hours after. He was thankful for the cool weather that lasted well into Spring so he had plenty of excuses to wear a coat.

Their loss in the final round of playoffs guaranteed a subdued and disappointing end to their season and Bitty had a hard time keeping up in his classes afterwards. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Jack was leaving for Providence and he knew logically that he would see Jack again, but it still felt like he was bracing for the loss every time he saw Jack. Jack didn’t help the situation by seeking Bitty out constantly

By the time the week of graduation rolled around, Bitty felt as though he were living in his own personalized kind of hell. His feelings for Jack had been easier to bury and forget about when he still thought Jack was 100% straight, but Kent Parson had shot that theory to hell when he crashed Epikegster and Bitty had very clearly overheard a more-than-friendly conversation between them. Ever since then, everything Jack did had slowly started to reframe itself in Bitty’s mind until it was pure torture.

Every time Jack brought his homework down to the kitchen while Bitty baked all afternoon or they snuck out to get fro-yo or coffee without inviting anyone else even though they were home or when Jack would purposely choose a table that was entirely too small for the two of them at Annie’s so that they had an excuse to knock knees under the table was another offence in the long list of grievances Bitty had against this boy who was on a collision course with Bitty’s heart. It didn’t help that Bitty’s soulmark would almost light up with bright pinks and purples when Jack touched him skin to skin at all. Bitty would have to press his wrist into the table to hide the mark that was just on the underside of his forearm whenever they were together, but sometimes he forgot, too wrapped up in the moment to remember to hide it. He knew Jack saw it and that Jack noted the differences, but neither of them talked about. Just like they never talked about all the times when they stood a little too close to each other when no one was looking.

The night before graduation, Bitty made the trek out to Faber with the rest of the Haus residents so Jack and Shitty could kiss the ice and say goodbye. After it was done, they snuck onto the roof and sat around for hours, riding the wave of nostalgia together. Bitty tried not to get too ahead of himself but almost burst into tears when he realized that he would be doing this again next year with Ransom, Holster and Lardo. Jack had taken the opportunity to wrap an arm around his shoulders and Bitty had pulled himself together, carefully disentangling himself from Jack. He wrapped his arms around himself and hugged tightly.

“Cold, Bittle?” Jack asked a few minutes later, breaking off from the conversation to check in on Bitty beside him.

“A little,” Bitty admitted. “I didn’t think it would so cold up here.”

“Here,” Jack said, shrugging off his jacket and slinging it around Bitty’s shoulders before Bitty could protest. He was immediately warmer, the thick flannel lining like a blanket around him. He pulled the flaps of the coat closer and got a whiff of Jack’s deodorant. He smiled down into his lap, knowing that a small blush was on his cheeks. He put his arms through the arms of the coat, glad for a cover on his soulmark as well. He was sure it was buzzing with activity. These days, Jack barely had to touch him for it to start to dance on Bitty’s arm. It was awful.

“Thanks, Jack,” he said quietly.

Sometime later that night, Bitty found himself gently shaken awake by Jack and he opened his eyes to find that he had fallen asleep on Jack’s shoulder at some point in the night.

“Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry,” he said, sitting up immediately and wiping at his mouth, sure there was drool there. Jack smiled at him and ruffled his hair gently. The rest of the group was picking up stray beer cans quietly and making to leave around them.

“Past your bedtime, eh?” he teased.

“Hush, you,” Bitty said and playfully shoved him. “Do you want your jacket back?”

“Later is fine,” Jack said.

As soon as they were outside of Faber, Jack laid a hand on Bitty’s arm to stop him from walking with the others and Bitty looked back in surprise.

“Jack?”

“I was thinking about taking the long way back. Want to join?”

Bitty softened, hugging himself again in the warmth of Jack’s coat. Jack’s face was washed out with the yellow light of the safety lights outside Faber, but it did nothing to diminish his handsomeness. Bitty felt a pang in his chest, but ignored it. He wouldn’t get many more moments like this with Jack anyways, so he might as well take what he could get.

Shitty looked back to see what was holding them up, but Jack waved him off and he nodded in recognition before wrapping an arm around Lardo’s shoulders and setting off towards the Haus with the rest of the boys.

Bitty stuffed his hands in the pockets of the jacket and followed Jack on the path that led around the other side of Faber. He was familiar with the route. Jack had taken them down it often enough after their early morning practices. They walked in silence for several minutes, only occasionally seeing someone else, but campus had emptied out the week before for the most part and only the graduating seniors and a handful of other students remained.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Bitty said when he couldn’t take the silence anymore.

Jack looked over at him in surprise.

“I won’t be very far away, Bittle,” he said. “You can visit. I’ll visit.”

“It won’t be the same,” Bitty insisted.

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “It won’t.”

A silence fell between them again and Bitty sighed into it. After a moment of thought, he slid Jack’s coat off and folded it over his arm before handing it back to Jack. Jack took it from him, their hands brushing as he did. Bitty saw his eyes flick towards Bitty’s soulmark and Bitty looked away, embarrassed. Then, just as Bitty was about to change the subject, Jack reached out and gently took Bitty’s arm in his hands, letting his fingers brush the soulmark. They both watched as the colors burst into life, changing from a dark red to deep pink that reminded Bitty of a sunset.

“Jack, it’s - I know that it can’t mean anything for you,” Bitty said and it’s the first time either of them have ever acknowledged Bitty’s soulmark out loud since that night on the roof months ago when Bitty had first gotten it. Jack didn’t let go of his wrist but instead just stared at Bitty as though he were fixed to the spot. Bitty continued, words rushing out of his mouth after months of not saying anything at all. “It’s just a potential. The soulmark artist said that it happens all the time that people have plenty of potential, you know, partners or bondmates or whatever, but it only matters if it’s mutual and even then, it takes months for a bond to actually form,” Bitty said, barely taking a breath. “It’s not that big of a deal. I know you don’t feel that way.”

“Bittle, I -” Jack said.

“No,” Bitty said firmly. “It’s just a thing that happens sometimes and I’m sure it’s just because we’re such good friends and anyways, I understand -”

“Bits,” Jack said and this time, Bitty looked up, startled by the nickname.

Jack was looking down at him, his eyes wide and anxious. One of his hands came up to rest on Bitty’s shoulder and then flitted to Bitty’s jaw. Bitty stood as still as he could, staring back at Jack, afraid to move in case it spooked him. Jack licked his lips and gazed intensely back before leaning down and kissing him lightly at first and then when Bitty slid his lips open, more firmly. His hand curled around the back of Bitty’s neck, pulling him gently closer and Bitty stepped into his space, fisting his hands in Jack’s shirt.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Jack murmured when they finally pulled apart. Bitty allowed himself to be tucked under Jack’s chin as Jack embraced him and he wrapped his own arms around Jack’s middle, burying his nose in Jack’s t-shirt.

“You’re graduating tomorrow,” Bitty said as a reminder to himself, miserable all over again. Jack ran his hands up and down Bitty’s arms and squeezed him again before stepping back and smiling softly down at him.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wanna take another lap around the Quad before going back to the Haus?”

  


\--

 

Bitty waited until he boarded his plane home to cry, letting the shock of the last two days fully hit him. He had spent the night previously in Jack’s bed, fully clothed and warm with Jack curled around him protectively and it still felt unreal even though Bitty had woken up multiple times in the middle of the night to reach out and touch Jack, reminding himself that Jack really had kissed him.

Bitty spent the first month of his summer break on pins and needles, waiting for Jack to miss a scheduled Skype call or stop texting, but it never happened. In fact, it was as if a floodgate had opened instead and he felt that he had talked to Jack more in a month than they had all year, even though he knew that was ridiculous. By the time he picked Jack up from the airport on July 3rd, he felt as if he were floating.

Jack held his hand for the entire drive back to Madison while Bitty drove and Bitty had to keep looking down to where their fingers were tangled near the gearshift to remind himself that it was really happening. When they arrived at the Bittle house, Jack let go of his hand with a squeeze and they barely got a chance to touch again until the next night when Bitty begged to take Jack out to the back pasture to watch the fireworks away from all the younger cousins and family members who wanted to pepper them both with questions. His Mama had been reluctant to let them go off on their own, but to Bitty’s surprise, Coach had stepped in and handed over the keys to his truck, putting an end to the argument. Bitty had a cooler full of pie and beer packed before anyone could change their mind.

Jack had grabbed his hand as soon as the Bittle house was out of sight and they had worked together to make a small nest of blankets and pillows in the bed of the truck before snuggling down with each other, talking quietly with their heads leaned against one another and then kissing until both of their mouths were sore and their clothes askew.

Bitty was laying down next to Jack with his head resting on his chest when Jack gently picked up Bitty’s arm. His fingers were light as they brushed against his forearm, tracing the vein down Bitty’s arm until they reached where his soulmark was. Bitty shivered when he saw the ink swirl under Jack’s careful touch, remembering the first time he had ever touched Lardo’s soulmark and how the ink had barely moved before returning to normal.

“I knew it wasn’t normal the first time I touched it,” Jack said after a moment. His chest rumbled underneath Bitty as he spoke and Bitty sighed, cuddling even closer.

“Me too,” Bitty said.

Jack leaned down and nuzzled his face into Bitty’s hair, kissing the top of his head and wrapping his arms tightly around him in a warm embrace. He dropped a kiss right behind Bitty’s ear. Bitty twisted in his arms so he could see Jack’s profile a little more clearly.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he confessed. His hand found Jack’s at his hip and he laced their fingers together before bringing both of their hands up to his mouth to kiss them. “I keep thinking I’m gonna wake up and this will all have been a dream.”

“I’m here,” Jack said and leaned down to catch the corner of Bitty’s mouth in a kiss. Bitty turned more fully and slid his other hand into Jack’s hair, pulling him closer.

 

\--

  


Jack’s kitchen in Providence was beautiful and Bitty would swear that he fell in love with at first sight. He joked that Jack had obviously rented the apartment with him in mind, even though he knew that Jack had signed the lease months ago, long before he graduated even. Jack had shrugged and said, “I remember thinking that you’d like the oven.”

Bitty had been struck momentarily speechless and then recovered, said, “Mr. Zimmermann, you are ridiculous.”

Jack had wrapped himself around Bitty from behind and kissed him. Bitty sank into his embrace, happy and content after a long day of flying and driving.

“What do you want to make first?” Jack asked. “I stocked the fridge and got some flour and sugar and a few other things I know you like.”

Bitty spun around and hit him in the chest.

“You did not,” he said and then just to make sure, he ran to the fridge and yanked it open. Sure enough, there was almost half a shelf of butter waiting for him as well as a few crates of different berries. He spotted a bag of apples on the counter next to the fridge and sighed in contentment. “Jack, this is amazing.”

Jack laughed softly behind him and said, “Should I leave you alone with my kitchen? My oven still needs a name, if you’re up to it.”

Bitty put a hand to his chest in endearment and grinned at Jack.

“Sweetheart, I might never leave your kitchen again,” he said dramatically.

“I knew I should have done it last on the tour,” Jack teased.

“You can finish the tour once I have a pie in the oven,” Bitty said and waved him out of the kitchen. Jack stole a kiss before leaving him there and Bitty clasped his hands together before rooting through Jack’s cabinets for the bowls and utensils he would need.

Some time later, Bitty closed the oven and leaned over the counter to set the timer. When he turned around, Jack was hovering in the open doorway, leaning against the wall and watching him with a soft expression.

“It’s nice to have you here, Bits,” he said before Bitty could even open his mouth.

Bitty melted. Jack crossed the room and took him in his arms before kissing him, pressing him up against the counter. Bitty felt his stomach stir in interest as Jack pressed against him, followed quickly by a stutter of nerves. They hadn’t gotten around to much more than heavy petting in Madison, but now that he was here in Providence and they had all week, Bitty was more than ready to get around to more. He had spent half the summer electrified by the thought of being alone with Jack for an entire week.

“I have something to show you,” Jack said, pulling back from Bitty, but keeping their bodies snug together.

“Okay,” Bitty said, a little dazed from the sheer proximity of Jack.

“Bittle, I don’t want to scare you or…or overwhelm you...” Jack trailed off in obvious frustration. His fingers found Bitty’s forearm a moment later and there was a bare moment of hesitation before he flipped Bitty’s arm and rested his other palm gently on Bitty’s mark. Bitty watched him in fascination as he carefully traced the indistinct outline of Bitty’s soulmark before he looked up and met Bitty’s eyes. He took a visible breath in before stepping back and pulling off his shirt.

“Jack, what are you -?” Bitty sputtered, before Jack turned around and Bitty caught sight of a dark blue soulmark on his right shoulder blade. “Oh,” Bitty sucked in a breath before stepping forward and reaching a hand out to Jack. He stopped right before he touched Jack’s skin. “Can I…?”

“Of course, Bits,” Jack said, looking over his shoulder at Bitty with worried eyes.

“When did you get this?” Bitty asked reverently, watching as the soulmark ink started to move and wave under his light touch, a plume of white and pink blooming in the middle of the dark blue.

“The day after I came back from Madison,” he said.

“Oh, honey,” Bitty said and couldn’t resist throwing his arms around Jack, hugging him tightly from behind. His face pressed against Jack’s soulmark and he kissed it, feeling an almost painful spike of joy when he saw the resulting bloom of color. He kissed it again just to watch the bloom grow. Jack’s hands covered his where they hooked around his waist and Bitty peeled himself away so Jack could turn around. As soon as Jack’s mouth was within range, Bitty pulled him down for a deep kiss that Jack eagerly leaned into.

When they came up for air, Jack rested his forehead against Bitty’s and Bitty squeezed his eyes shut, trying and failing to not let the few tears pooled in them fall. He reached up to cup Jack’s face with both hands and opened his eyes to see Jack gazing back at him, full of a tenderness that Bitty would have thought impossible a few months ago.

“I honestly don’t know that there’s a single thing in the world that you could do to scare me off at this point, Mr. Zimmermann,” Bitty said fiercely and he stood up on his tiptoes to press his mouth against Jack’s again.

“There’s nothing you can do to scare me away either, Bits,” Jack said, eyes dark and serious as they bore into Bitty’s.

  


\--

 

Bitty’s mark begins to settle two months later, some of the lighter pinks and reds slowly darkening to a dark maroon. He felt a small thrill every time he saw Jack’s mark reflecting the same colors too instead of the stormy blues that had dominated it at first. It wasn’t until nearly a month after he first started to notice the colors changing together that his soulmark started to take shape.

He was sitting in class one day late in fall semester when his eyes finally made sense of what the lines were becoming on his arm. He dropped his pen on the floor in his excited jump and then immediately flushed as several people looked over to him. He smiled brightly at them and looked pointedly down at his notes for the rest of the class. He didn’t even bother going back to the Haus after his class was over, instead catching a bus straight to the train station and getting on the first train to Providence to surprise Jack, who had been planning on driving down in the morning to pick him up for the weekend anyways.

Bitty let himself in when he arrived early in the evening to an empty apartment. He parked the TV on ESPN in time to catch the pre-show for Jack’s game and even a glimpse of Jack himself at warm-ups. Bitty felt as though he was going to vibrate out of his skin with his revelation, but had resisted texting Jack about it before a game. When Jack’s fridge turned out to be empty, Bitty ordered pizza because he couldn’t be bothered to make sense of the random ingredients in Jack’s pantry just then.

As soon as the pizza arrived, he collapsed on the couch and didn’t move until the game was over and only then to put the remaining pizza in the fridge and climb into bed. He was asleep by the time Jack made it home and woke him with a gentle kiss to his forehead.

“Hey, Bits,” he whispered. “Thought I was going to come get you in the morning.”

Bitty sat up and kissed him sleepily before he remembered why he had come early.

“Take off your shirt,” Bitty ordered, shaking sleep from his head.

Jack smiled at him, bemused.

“What?” he asked.

“I want to see something,” Bitty said, sitting up and letting the covers fall away. Jack tilted his head in question, but then shrugged and pulled his shirt over his head, throwing it into the corner of the bedroom.

Bitty reached out and smoothed his hands across Jack’s chest, tracing the edge of his collarbone. He dropped a kiss on Jack’s bare shoulder and then kissed his mouth too, before grabbing Jack’s shoulder and turning him gently around. Jack went without protest.

Bitty felt a thrill of satisfaction when he saw Jack’s soulmark.

“It’s a rabbit,” he said, tracing the long, delicate ears on Jack’s shoulder blade.

“ _Un lapin_?” Jack asked, looking over his shoulder at Bitty. Bitty rocked forward to kiss him.

“ _Un lapin_ ,” he confirmed with a serious nod, knowing his accent was atrocious. Jack smiled anyways and pulled him back for another kiss.

“Good,” Jack said. “I always had a soft spot for Señor Bun.”

Bitty swatted at him, but Jack was undeterred and reached to sweep Bitty into his arms. Bitty went willingly, cuddling up against Jack’s bare chest. Jack slid a hand up Bitty’s forearm and he turned it so he could see Bitty’s soulmark. He was silent for a long moment, his big thumb brushing across the still indistinct shape of the rabbit on Bitty’s wrist.

“It’s more distinct on your shoulder,” Bitty whispered. “The ears are settled.”

Jack hummed and then kissed Bitty’s wrist tenderly. He looked down at Bitty with soft blue eyes that made Bitty want to melt right on the spot.

“You should take a picture of it for me so I can see it without a mirror,” Jack said, pressing a kiss into Bitty’s hair and then nosing his way to behind Bitty’s ear and then to his neck. Bitty shivered in his arms and shifted so he could push Jack back onto the bed, straddling him. Jack smiled back at him from the pillows.

“Mr. Zimmermann, are you telling me you want me to take a picture of you naked?”

“I’m not naked, Bits,” Jack said, even as he played with the hem of Bitty’s shirt. Bitty pulled his shirt up and over and then leaned down to kiss Jack, long and slow. He pulled briefly away, a smile on his lips.

“Something tells me you’re about to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, happy update week, happy....uh...end of 2016? Yeah, equal, right?
> 
> Thanks for any feedback - it's so wonderful to read your thoughts. :)
> 
> Yo! Check out the truly lovely fanart that space-snob did of the Jack & Bitty's soulmarks - linked in the related works section below!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fanart for "heart on your sleeve"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9052408) by [space_snob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_snob/pseuds/space_snob)




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